


(i'm willing to) wait for it

by newsbypostcard



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angst, Desk Sex, Hand Jobs, Lovers to Friends, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-04-30 04:22:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5150090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aaron Burr has <em>apparently</em> accidentally procured the lease for the offices across the street from where Alexander Hamilton has already set up shop. Accordingly, he is in hell. Alexander exhibits <em>no</em> restraint, and Burr just wants to practice the law in <em>peace</em>. </p><p>Is that too much to ask?</p>
            </blockquote>





	(i'm willing to) wait for it

**Author's Note:**

> or, "the wikipedia page for aaron burr says that he and hamilton dined often together by 1798, and we all know what that means"
> 
> [kathy](http://anaeolist.tumblr.com/) and [cecilia](http://archiveofourown.org/users/psikeval) are responsible for this in irredeemable ways, though I take full responsibility for how this fic is not exclusively just a delightful romp of good feelings.

  


* * *

  


-  
_I have the honour to be,_  
_yr obdt svt,_
    
    
      _A. Ham_
    

-

Burr crumples the letter in his hand and shuts his eyes, focusing on steadying his breathing. “How does a bastard,” he mutters under his breath, “orphan, son of a _whore_ \--”

“Ah! Well, hello! Aaron Burr, sir,” Hamilton croons smoothly, skirting around him with some obscene number of books under his arms. “You’re becoming quite the orphan connoisseur, sir. Or is it me you’re cursing out? I’m never truly sure.”

“Hamilton,” Burr sighs. “Speak of the devil.”

“So you _do_ reach conclusions? At last, I rest assured.”

 _Talk. Less._ Burr beseeches him silently, sighs, and sets a finger frustratedly at the bridge of his nose. “I was just reading your letter _congratulating me_ on my -- qualifications--”

“Yes! Isn’t it wonderful? We’re starting our practices at around the same time. Providence!” Hamilton grins at him; the sun, Burr surmises, must fuel him directly.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” Burr manages, smile pained and wrought.

“You mean you didn’t know?” Hamilton points with one volume-laden hand across the way. “Those are my offices. Right next door to yours!”

Burr stares blankly. “You’re joking.”

“I assumed you knew.”

“Why would I--” Burr aborts the sentence and looks at Hamilton, tight-lipped. “No. I didn’t know.”

“Well! We keep meeting!” Hamilton grins, that wild thing that gets under Burr’s skin and roots around until he is left with the uncontrollable urge to grit his teeth. “I hope moving in is going well. I’d love to stop and chat, or help, but I have -- a lot of--” he struggles briefly under the weight of the books in his arms before getting a hand under them again -- “reading--”

“I see that,” Burr deadpans. He takes a moment to survey Hamilton’s disastrousness, but then his eye drags on the name on one of Alexander’s files. “Wait -- whaaaat?” Horror suddenly strikes his features. “You’re not -- on the _Weeks_ trial, are you?”

“Yes!” Hamilton nods gleefully. “The first murder trial of our new country--”

“Yeah, yeah -- listen. That’s _my_ case.”

“What? No! Weeks hired me. Hired Livingston, too. Ezra--”

Burr groans and buries his face in his hands. “Aren’t there a million things you haven’t done? You don’t need this.”

“Sure,” Hamilton says casually, “but haven’t you always wondered what going to court together would be like?”

Burr waits for Hamilton to realize what he’s just said and amend, but he soon reaches the conclusion that that’s just what he’d _meant_ to say -- that Hamilton is _actually asking_ if Burr hasn’t always wanted to be _co-counsel_ with him, as though being allies, rather than adversaries, should be among his first instincts.

The laugh is leaving his throat before he has a chance to reel it in. “No,” says Burr. “No; I can safely say I have never wanted that.” The smile drops from his features. “Recuse yourself, Hamilton.”

“So much asservation today, Burr!” Hamilton breathes, as though in genuine awe. “Are you feeling all right?”

Burr sighs. “You’re not going to, are you.”

“Nope! And neither are you, I’d guess, so I guess you’re stuck with me.” Hamilton grins widely, wildly, unwavering.

Burr grinds his teeth.

“Why do you assume you’re the smartest in the room?” he blurts out, hating the day with sudden intensity.

“Because I usually am,” Hamilton replies without the slightest moment’s hesitation. “Anyway, Burr -- tons of work to do, but I’m glad I caught you. I have the honour to be -- your obedient neighbour--”

“Just go,” bites Burr; and Hamilton flashes another smile at him as he turns away.

“The man is non- _stop_ ,” Burr mutters to himself, shaking his head as he watches Hamilton amble off with his comically large pile of books; and, standing alone in the street with Hamilton’s letter still crushed in his fist, he tries desperately to feel something other than profound regret that he’d ever bothered to secure the deed to offices without first discovering where Hamilton had set up shop, so that he might’ve remained considerably further away from him at all times.

  


  


The thing is that Burr, while cautious, is not an _idiot_. It’s not beyond him that, accompanied with the unadulterated annoyance that seems to almost precede Hamilton’s arrival as though to announce his nearby presence, he also feels a bizarre, unexplainable _respect_ for the annoyance he brings. It’s the sort of feeling that rises within him so unexpectedly that he finds he must often clench a fist to his mouth after talking to him, to shut his eyes and dig his fingernails into his palm, before he can quite recall how to practice law whenever Hamilton comes by.

But even then, it’s mostly no use.

Burr spends many hours with his head in his hands in the weeks that follow, in case solemnity may cure him of the indomitable curse that is _admiring_ Alexander Hamilton. They are hours that should have been spent trying to supercede Hamilton’s incredible ability to speak unflaggingly for six hours about anything that should strike him as worthy of his passionate attentions that day; they are hours he should be spending preparing for the case in which he must appear as though he deserves Ezra Weeks’ estimation of him as a good lawyer. And yet he spends them instead meditating on both Hamilton and lack of same, in case one or the other should cure him of this ill.

Occasionally, he does rise and strives to organize his files into something resembling order. He should at _least_ have a better grasp on the _facts_ than Hamilton does, on the off-chance Burr may manage to counteract Hamilton’s sheer emotionality, his fervor, his intensity, his ... devotion; his -- _stamina_ \-- with --

\-- with regard to --

What was he thinking about--? 

Right. _Facts_.

Hamilton laughs outside, rising Burr furiously out of one such moment of head-in-hands reflection while he tries to rouse some will in himself to try to be at least as … _something_ as Hamilton if he is going to rival him in the field of law. The man is likeable -- _to some._ And that’s -- it’s --

_Unforgivable?_

Hamilton’s laughter continues to reach him across the way, and Burr tastes bile.

He _really_ needs to talk less.

And smile less.

Just … less. Less ... all of him. _Less Hamilton._

Then, someday, perhaps Burr may breathe again.

  


  


Of course, _less Hamilton_ is not what Burr gets.

He gets his best work done after dinner, when Hamilton has gone home to his family, for all the _less_ of him the time of day offers him. The night is blessedly peaceful. Burr can focus; Burr can deal in law, in _facts_. He isn’t constantly derailed, after dinner, by such frivolities as talking and emotion and passion and -- _dedication_ \--

He is staring blankly at the flame of his candle thinking at length about how undistracted he is by Hamilton when there comes a knock at the door.

Burr looks up. It’s well past midnight; it wouldn’t be Theodosia. Who knew he was here--?

“Alexander?” 

Burr opens the door to see the man there, leaning against the doorframe with one elbow propped high above his head, grinning.

“Aaron Burr, sir!” Hamilton says cheerfully. He appears rather uncowed for someone who has come quite purposefully to another’s place of business after midnight.

“It’s the middle of the night.”

Hamilton imparts upon him a look of perfect innocence. “Can we confer, sir?”

Burr purses his lips. “Is this a legal matter?”

“Yes, and it’s important to me.” Apart from the fact that he’s staring at Burr peculiarly through his eyelashes, Hamilton is otherwise the picture of sincerity. 

Burr, on the other hand, appears a small disaster: given the hour, he’s allowed his shirt to come untucked on one side, and his cravat is loose and flowing alongside the ruff of his shirt. Hamilton, in comparison, is perfectly dressed; so, too, is he perfectly coiffed, appearing Burr’s superior in every way. It is as though he is capable of rolling out of bed and appearing this way at any time of day, under any circumstance, like some -- like -- some --

“What do you need?” Burr asks, trying not to appear as disarmed as he feels.

“Burr,” Hamilton begins seriously, taking him gently by both shoulders. “You’re a better lawyer than me.”

Burr stares. “...Okay…” Has he fallen asleep at his desk, perhaps?

“I know I talk too much,” Hamilton placates. “I’m abrasive. You’re incredible in court -- you’re succinct, persuasive...” He squeezes Burr’s shoulders. “My client needs a strong defense. _You’re_ the solution.”

Burr has broken into a sweat of some kind. Alexander is standing close and complimenting him. What’s the matter with him? Has he foregone sleep too many nights? 

“Who’s your client?” Burr asks.

Hamilton grins brightly. “The new US constitution?”

Then Burr’s fever morphs quickly into one of embarrassment as he realizes that Hamilton is not here for him at all but has -- as goddamned _always_ \-- in fact shown up for the US constitution.

“No,” Burr says shortly, clipping his mortification, moving beyond Hamilton’s reach.

Hamilton follows him inside. “Hear me out.”

“No way.”

“A series of essays, anonymously published, defending the document to the public--”

“No one’ll read it.”

“I disagree.”

 _Of course you do._ Burr turns to face Hamilton where he is now standing in the middle of his office, in the dark, except for where the candle on the desk illuminates the outline of his face. _Even now, in the twilight, will Hamilton’s glow not recede?_

Burr presses his nails into his palms. “And if it fails?”

“Burr, that’s why we need it!”

“The constitution’s a mess,” Burr reminds him.

“So it needs amendments.”

“It’s full of contradictions.”

“So is independence. We have to start somewhere.”

“No. No way.”

Hamilton shakes his head slowly, appraising him with disappointment. Had he truly expected a different outcome? “You’re making a mistake,” Hamilton tells him.

Burr laughs in his throat, his bizarre dizziness at last dissolving back into wonderfully familiar annoyance. “Goodnight,” he says, turning his back to Hamilton again.

“Hey.” Hamilton balls a fist in his shirt, stops him from turning, and as Burr moves slowly back to look at him, his pulse is suddenly hard in his throat. “What are you waiting for?” 

Hamilton’s voice is low, and yet somehow it’s all the same full of his usual passion and sound and fury and need. He searches Burr’s face with a familiar glint in his eyes, but it’s different this time -- serious, as though really asking him a question to which he wants to know the answer. 

“What do you stall for?” says Hamilton, holding Burr’s eye.

Burr’s throat is dry. He is incapable of further motion. He is trying to buy himself time to think.

Why does he feel this way?

“What?” Burr asks. 

“We won the war,” placates Hamilton. “What was it all for?”

Burr bows his head. Government. _Right._

“Do you support the constitution?” Hamilton asks, after waiting through another silence for too short a time.

“Of course,” Burr says, and finds it in him to raise his face to Hamilton again.

“Then defend it,” Hamilton implores of him, filled to the brim with sincerity, the light of the candle flickering, daunting, in his eyes.

Burr shakes his head and removes Hamilton’s hand from where it’s bunched in his shirt, throwing it back at him. “And what if you’re backing the wrong horse?”

“Burr--” Hamilton looks almost as frustrated with Burr as Burr feels with him. “We studied, and we fought, and we _killed_ \-- for the notion of a nation we now get to build. For once in your life, take a stand with pride! I don’t understand how you stand to the side!” 

He smacks the back of his hand to Burr’s shoulder, and Burr watches it happen, his teeth gritting furiously -- clenches his hands with the force it takes him not to take Hamilton by the neck and _make_ him stop talking. 

“I’ll--” he says, voice rising, grabbing Hamilton’s hand and leaning it back against the lapel of Hamilton’s shirt in turn, “keep all my plans close to my chest,” he tells him firmly. “I’ll wait here, and see -- which way the wind will blow. I’m taking my time -- watching the afterbirth of a nation -- watching the tension grow--”

Hamilton shakes his head, all seriousness. Burr’s hand falls, neglected, back to his side.

“If you stand for nothing, Burr,” Hamilton says, tone of perfect clarity and yet of apparent restraint, “what will you fall for?”

“Fools who run their mouths off,” Burr says, slowly, fiercely, “wind up _dead_.”

Alexander shrugs. “I’d rather be divisive than indecisive.”

Burr clenches his jaw, appraising him and his -- perfection. “You’re on your own, Hamilton,” he says, voice low, tone final.

Hamilton nods and backs away toward the door, holding his hands defensively in front of him. “Okay, Burr. Your loss.”

And then Burr is left, once again -- and much less blessedly -- alone.

  


  


Hamilton's smile remains a very wild thing, as untamed as his beliefs, and Burr regrets ever giving him the advice to do it more.

“Mister Burr, sir!” says Hamilton, beaming savagely as he bursts into Burr’s office.

Burr leans to set his forehead pre-emptively into his hand, shutting his eyes in an attempt to gather the required strength to deal with this. “What is it, Hamilton,” he says, raising his face at last to face him.

“I was just passing by when I couldn’t help but notice you were reading the _Independent_!”

“Hardly unusual. I read every edition.” Burr responds to him as though challenged every time, and Hamilton, blessedly or annoyingly, never fails to brush past his reaction as though it had been perfectly normal in its magnitude.

“Then you’ve at least been _reading_ my papers!”

Burr grits his teeth. “It has not been lost on me that I may have been reading some of your rambling material during such perusals of the daily news, Hamilton. Did you want something?”

“I wanted to ask you what you thought.”

Burr blinks. “What _I_ thought? Do you really care about that?”

“Of course. I sought your assistance, did I not? Now I’m seeking your -- _opinion._ ”

Aha. “Nice try, Hamilton.” He folds the paper indelicately and throws it on the desk in front of him.

“Try, sir?”

“I won’t polarize myself for your -- edification.”

“I respect you, Burr!”

“Hamilton...”

“I only want to know if I’ve managed to sway a disciplined legal mind such as your own. Or should I keep writing?”

Write … _more_? “You _already_ write like you’re running out of time. You can’t write every second you’re alive.”

“Why not?”

Burr blinks at him. “You just -- can’t.”

“But there’s a million things I haven’t--”

“Hamilton,” Burr says again, just to interrupt him.

Alexander is rocking back and forth on his feet, his hands held behind his back, still with that smile of innocence imparted, and fueling the fire in Burr’s gut by saying -- nothing.

_Talk more. Smile -- **less**._

“What do you want, Hamilton?” Burr repeats, tiredly.

“Are you sure you don’t want to chip in, Burr?”

“I’m sure.”

“Don’t you agree that we’re performing an act of stabilization for government?”

“I have no comment.”

“How do you feel about government, sir?”

“How many of these are you going to write, exactly?”

Hamilton shrugs. “Maybe thirty.”

 _Twice that, then._

“Non-stop,” Burr mutters. “So why are you _really_ here, Hamilton?”

Hamilton’s cheeks reposition themselves, his smile fixing somewhat sadly, as though he has finally realized that he is once again not going to succeed in dragging from Burr anything he doesn’t freely wish to give. 

“To brag, of course,” Hamilton says, and he squares his jaw as though to spurn Burr’s fervor.

Burr blinks at him, then pushes his feet off his desk and stands, swiftly buttoning his coat, placing a hand on Hamilton’s shoulder. “Well, go brag somewhere else,” he says tersely, guiding him toward the door.

“You’re not even a little swayed?” Hamilton asks as he backs away with Burr’s hand on his lapel. His eyes shine brightly. He is earnest, he is--

“Don’t you see the value of speaking your mind, Burr? Why won’t you defend the nation with your words as you would have with your life?”

A _bastard_.

“Leave,” Burr repeats firmly, shoving him toward the door with finality. “And kindly don’t interrupt my work again unless you have something of _substance_ to discuss.”

Hamilton whirls immediately around, opening his mouth to say something further -- but just as instantly as it had ignited, the light dies in his eyes, becomes something else, the grin fading immediately from his face.

“Huh,” Hamilton says. He looks at Burr, or through him, with such a single-mindedness so as to strike Burr as entirely indecent.

“No,” Burr replies immediately, pointing an accusatory finger. “Not here.”

“Do you have paper on hand?”

“ _Hamilton._ ”

But it’s too late; Hamilton has already swept past him, pulled a random parchment out from the stack on Burr’s desk, grabbed the pen from its well; and there he remains, bent in front of Burr over a desk that is resolutely not his own, writing like tomorrow won’t arrive. 

Burr is -- in _hell_.

“Get out,” Burr hisses under his breath from where he has stopped by the door. He is at once unwilling to grab at Hamilton and compelled to do so; Hamilton either does not hear or will not acknowledge him. He is instead operating under the worst kind of silence Burr can conceive of: one of single-minded engagement, a passionate reticence, somehow filling the room with nothing except the sound of his pen scrawling with incredible speed across the page.

Hamilton has finally stopped talking, and the silence is just as discomforting.

Every scratch of the pen is a personal affront against Burr’s person. With each dash of Alexander’s hand toward the inkwell, Burr follows the line of his form, bent at a 45-degree angle, stiff with focus and yet somehow relaxed, as though he had been born just to bring this moment into being.

“Why do you write like you’re running out of time,” Burr whispers, neither to Hamilton nor to himself, upon having watched this scene unfold before him with unmoving fixation for some minutes; and this, for some reason, brings Hamilton to look up at him. Then, directed back toward his parchment, his gaze doubles back immediately, his pen still poised over the page as though to write even as he gapes at him.

“Burr?” asks Hamilton, brow creasing with concern.

A drop of ink wells at the tip of his pen.

“Why do you write like you’re running out of time?” Burr says again, louder. He feels addled, his old fever having returned to him at once.

Hamilton regards him with an expression of ongoing inquiry, as though utterly stunned his actions have attracted so much of Burr’s attention. “I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory,” he explains quietly, as though saying something perfectly ordinary. “Who’s to say we _aren’t_ running out of time?”

Burr waits under Hamilton’s gaze. His attentions having been so recently turned from a singular purpose, Hamilton’s eyes are just as focused and as purposeful when he looks at Burr as they are when he is writing; and after a moment of being forced to register the mounting furor in his gut resulting from the fact of being the target of such a gaze, Burr finds it in him to step forward and grab Hamilton by the jacket with a single, gentle fist.

“This is my office,” he breathes.

“Yes,” Hamilton says, looking as bewildered as Burr feels.

“If you must write like -- _that_ \-- you will do it in _your_ office.”

“Okay,” Hamilton says; but Burr’s hands stay buried in his coat, and Hamilton is licking his lips, searching Burr’s eyes, one hand splayed out beside him and still holding the pen upright so as to prevent it from spilling even now.

Burr -- Burr is --

“Why do you write like you’re running out of time?” Burr repeats, again, hoarse: a desperate question, met only with a hesitant smile from Hamilton.

“Why, Mister Burr, sir,” he says quietly, licking his lips again. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you wanted me to write in here all the _time_ \--”

“ _Talk less,_ ” Burr hisses; and before he’s understood his own motives, he has pulled Hamilton in with the hand wound in his coat to swallow his words down directly, silence again flooding the room except for Burr’s laboured breathing.

Hamilton’s hands stay splayed on either side of them, his form frozen with apparent shock, unbreathing, unmoving with Burr’s lips against his; but then the pen tumbles out of his hand at last, clattering against the desk, and he cups Burr’s face with both hands and pulls him _in_.

Hamilton kisses the way he lives: ravenously, passionately, ambitiously, yet at once he balances just this side of control. His tongue articulates; Burr is laid bare. Some constrained sound escapes from Burr’s throat, and he feels the sides of Hamilton’s mouth turn up into a smile beneath his lips, his thumbs running along Burr’s sideburns with a peculiar care that extends tremor to his legs.

Burr compensates for his fever, his weakness, _surely he is ill, that explains all of this_ , by leaning Hamilton hard against the edge of his desk, one hand bracing against the back of his neck. Hamilton’s breath comes in harsh bursts, half-laughter, half-desire, and pulls himself up onto the desk’s surface, setting his knees wide, pulling Burr against him.

Hamilton’s hands move to the clasp of Burr’s trousers, his lips pulling away, and Burr’s fingers are tight in Hamilton’s thigh, against the hairline of his neck, ever-furious, until Hamilton spits quite suddenly into his hand.

“What,” asks Burr thickly; but Hamilton’s hand finds Burr’s cock around the folds of his pants and wraps around it, and Burr shuts up immediately, bowing his head and swallowing back a moan. Hamilton sets his lips against Burr’s forehead, a horrifically intimate gesture, one that conveys such care so as to force heat to surge deeply within Burr, almost in competition with the sensations following from the gentle pull of Hamilton’s fingers against him.

“Burr,” mutters Hamilton; and his own name sounds sinful, like this, from Hamilton’s lips rested against his head, his hand around his cock.

“Shut up,” Burr bites; and he raises his head, kisses Hamilton again, tries to keep his breathing steady at the same time that he fumbles at Hamilton’s trousers with no real plan in mind for what may happen when he manages them open. Each of his efforts are interrupted, regardless and _as usual_ , by Hamilton, his mouth on his as evocative of Burr’s tremors as is the hand on his cock; and Burr eventually gives up, leans his face hard down on Hamilton’s shoulder as Hamilton sets a devoted rhythm, tries to prevent horrific sobs from leaving his lungs, his hands bracing on the lip of the desk.

Hamilton’s shoulders shudder, a disbelieving laugh, and then his free hand is fumbling with something, it is reaching for Burr’s hips and forcing them forward at the same time that he loosens his hand, resulting in some spectacular _fucking_ thing that leaves Burr almost entirely collapsed against him. Hamilton spits again, his own hips are shifting forward, and--

Hamilton’s fist closes around both of them at once, leaving Burr hissing furious insults against his shoulder as the weight of Hamilton’s erection is brought against his.

“You must be out of your goddamned mind,” Burr mutters, resting his forehead against Hamilton’s. One hand rises at last to grip at the back of Alexander’s neck, to hold him in place as he fucks into Hamilton’s hand, finding friction from so many _incredible_ sources. Hamilton reaches, after few slow thrusts, to find Burr’s hand still braced against the desk; then he moves it to where his own fingers are folded around them and wraps Burr’s hand over his.

“I,” Hamilton says, his breath blessedly hitching in turn, “did not start this.”

“You did. You _always_ start it. _You_ came in here, _you_ \-- bent over my desk -- _my desk_ \-- to _write_ , as you do--”

“Mister Burr,” he says again, and Burr _hates_ the sound of his name for what it does to him when out of Hamilton’s mouth. He vows to change it immediately after whatever this is has concluded, to something Dutch and unpronounceable even by the most skilled of tongues. “If I had known…”

“You would have done it sooner?” Burr interjects, voice slurring indelicately. His eyes shutter closed as Hamilton guides their hands in some unimaginably controlled rhythm.

“Yes,” Hamilton agrees. “And more often.” Then his wrist flicks, grip tight, and Burr forgets to keep talking.

Hamilton’s dedication to bringing them off is, as it is in all things, impressive. Burr hates and relishes every second, feeling blessed and cursed to find himself caught in the undertow of one of Alexander’s passions. He presses his lips to Hamilton’s neck, ignores Hamilton’s delighted noise, until the pressure is too tight, their hands too good, the length of Hamilton against him too _fucking much._

Burr stands up straight, tense, as he looks at Hamilton, feeling utterly destroyed. Hamilton looks at him and says, “Mister Burr, sir,” his voice smooth, tone flooded with kindness and a peculiar adoration that leaves Burr breathless again. Burr’s fingers are tense against Hamilton’s but he does not stop him, and Hamilton keeps rhythm while he meets his eye. 

Burr registers at once the way Hamilton looks and is brought to moan. Hamilton’s hair is wild, his smile is wild, his eyes are wild, as his hand moves against them, careful and constrained. The other hand is clenched in the collar of Burr’s frock, twisting, his breath hard and fast, and god _damnit, Hamilton, could you try to contain the things that you are for a singular incremental **second**_ \--

But he does not, and with Hamilton’s grip tightening around the length of him, looking as he does, the curve of his lips conveying his enjoyment at watching Burr undone -- Burr spills over their hands -- his closing eyes the only thing to hold him back from watching Hamilton as it happens--

And when he re-opens them, Hamilton’s grin is broader, somehow yet more eager, with overjoyed laughter wheezing from deep within his lungs. His breath heaves; Burr’s breath heaves; something, not desire, is building in Burr’s chest. Hamilton’s fist wends tighter in his collar, Hamilton is --

\-- _happy_ \--

And Burr … Burr is suddenly _furious._

He wrenches away from Hamilton, slips out from his grip, pockets himself immediately back into his trousers with his unsullied hand, the other splayed out in front of him as he paces the room looking for some cloth with which to clean himself. His cheeks, his ears burn red. He feels sure the fault is his own and also that it belongs entirely to Hamilton. 

There is no possible way to explain what has transpired here without somehow placing fault upon someone. Hamilton _had_ burst into his office and begun to write like he needs it to survive; what was Burr to do? To tolerate such a flagrant display of _capability_ without taking some form of action? To merely allow Hamilton to lay himself vulnerable in his place of business? To--

“Burr.”

The voice is a solace, reaching him from across the room where Burr has lost himself in wiping come from between his fingers. “Burr,” Hamilton says it again, hitting deep within him on a level Burr is just as incapable of ignoring as any damn thing about him; and Burr forces himself to turn to look at Hamilton where he is still seated on his desk.

Hamilton’s hand is still wrapped around his cock. It moves lazily, languorous, while he looks at Burr, a flush filling his cheeks. Strings tug at the sides of his mouth, its curve a puppet of his desire; his eyes close slowly and re-open, the slow incline of his eyelashes a provocation of the highest order.

Burr tries to look away, but he is transfixed. Even as he wipes his hand thoroughly and frantically from the other side of the room, he cannot help but watch Alexander pleasure himself while perched atop his desk. Piles of Burr’s work surrounds him, a sizeable ink stain from the long-abandoned pen spreading on the newspaper behind him. 

It is an image Burr will never be clear of.

He ought to look away. He _must_ look away.

He does not look away.

He feels his lip curling anew as he watches Hamilton. He has stopped saying Burr’s name; that much is a blessing. Imagine, Burr thinks, if on top of defiling himself, seated on his desk and out of his trousers as he is, he kept saying his _name_ on top of it all, kept closing his lips around it, _Burr_ , that lilting voice, those eyes wide with youth and idealism, his palm on his cock, moist lips, curving fingers, why won’t he say his _name_ again, for God’s _sake_ , Alexander, smile _less_ , talk _more_ \--

The harsh noise in his throat again originates in fury, he tells himself, as he tosses the rag aside. He reaches Hamilton in four long strides. His hands are clenched in Hamilton’s jacket for just long enough for Burr’s lips to sufficiently devastate Alexander’s before he replaces Hamilton’s hand around his cock with one of his own, his wrist flicking roughly until Alexander is at last abandoned by his words -- left to stammer utterly inarticulate syllables as Burr ruins him. 

Burr swallows these down, too, cherishes them just as much as he may privately relish in Alexander’s speeches; and when Hamilton comes it is with a shout, with Burr’s hands holding him steady.

In one sense, it is the closest thing to a victory over Hamilton Burr thinks he may ever truly have.

In another sense -- the victory is _entirely_ Hamilton’s.

  


  


Every time Burr looks at his desk the next day, he sees Hamilton: perched atop its surface, stroking himself off with one lazy hand, looking at Burr as though the very sight of him should help him with the task, and Burr thinks death might be preferable.

He spends six hours trying to stare the surface down before finally sweeping everything off it in one furious gesture and storming outside, in some futile search for a solution.

“You there,” Burr calls shortly, beckoning to the nearest able-bodied male he can find. “Find me two good men to remove this desk.”

“Remove it, sir?”

“Remove it and set it ablaze.” He looks menacingly toward it, as though it has done him a personal wrong. “It is well past time I got a new one.”

The man sputters uncomprehending protests until Burr procures several large bills from his pocket; and within the hour, the job is done.

Naturally, Hamilton is there when it’s removed, leaning in the doorway of his offices with one ankle hitched over the other, his arms crossed, looking over the scene with raised eyebrows; and, with the sort of pleased smile that usually caused Burr’s toes to curl (in _anger_ , of course), Hamilton stares at him across the expanse, saying nothing, only smirking in too-polite recognition of Burr’s undoing.

(Smile _less_.)

Burr makes a harsh noise in his throat and turns on his heel to return indoors, slamming the door behind him -- then stops dead in his tracks when he realizes he has no surface upon which to work.

Hamilton is still in his office’s doorway, unmoved, when Burr wrenches the door back open and marches down the street, fists clenched, seconds later.

“Mister Burr, sir,” calls Hamilton after him.

“Do not,” he mutters to no one.

“There’s a spare desk in my office if you want it, sir.”

And Burr thinks he has a handle on the situation until his feet stop moving of their own accord, until they spin him around on a heel, until he is marching furiously into Hamilton’s office to tell him just what he thinks of his _spare desk_ ; and when they defile that one, too, Burr opts to sit on the floor to write up his documents on the back of a book for the remainder of the week.

  


  


_(It occurs to Burr much, much later, once he’s properly settled in London, that maybe Hamilton wore his glasses during the duel to be able to see Burr’s face more clearly in the moment that followed -- to see, regardless of whether Burr had opted to hold his pistol in the air or whether he’d shot at him, what his true beliefs were at last._

_And wasn’t he right? Hadn’t it been Burr’s most honest moment, when the cry had wrested itself from his chest at the same time the bullet tore into Hamilton’s flesh? When he’d had to be restrained and removed in the midst of his attempt to stop Hamilton from hitting the ground, as though such an action could take back the fact of his firing?_

_When he’d realized seconds too late that of course, of **course** Hamilton would never have fired at him?_

_‘I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory.’_

_Had Alexander found what he’d been looking for?_ )

  


  


The problem, Burr soon realizes -- at least, _among_ the problems -- is that every time Burr shows up in Hamilton’s office or Hamilton whirls madly into his, Hamilton has the audacity to begin speaking first. 

_Hamilton doesn’t hesitate._

There is nothing Burr can do to stem the barrage of impassioned nonsense once it’s begun -- _only it’s never nonsense, is it, it is carefully considered and articulate if it is anything_ \-- and so Burr, dedicated as he is to playing his cards close to his chest, never finds the opportunity to stop Hamilton long enough to tell him to stay the hell away, for both of their sakes.

The only way Hamilton reliably stops talking is if Burr kisses him. 

Unfortunately for Burr, Hamilton is just as willing to pull away from a kiss as he ever is to stop talking, and things reliably unravel entirely after that.

_He exhibits no restraint._

Hamilton has never done a thing in his life halfway. He holds none of Burr’s reserve. From the second Burr’s hand braces angrily against his skin, Hamilton leans into the touch, deepens the kiss, tightens his grip around Burr’s cock -- takes _everything_ that Burr moves to offer.

_He takes and he takes and he takes--_

And Burr--

Maybe Burr has more in common with Hamilton than he’s willing to admit. Maybe it _is_ just as hard for him to pull away. Maybe he invites Hamilton to open the kiss wider, half the time; maybe he is just as hungry for everything Hamilton will offer him. 

_Hamilton’s pace is relentless, he wastes no time--_

Maybe it is he who, once, is left a sobbing, quaking mess when Hamilton decides to take his time; maybe it is Burr who chases after Hamilton when he pulls back, somehow _only_ finding within him some curtailing capacity when Burr’s dignity is on the line; and maybe it is Burr who begins to lose control when Hamilton begins to murmur salacious entreaties against Burr’s lips as Burr fucks helplessly into his hand, “ _just you wait, just you -- wait --_ ”

And Burr -- 

Burr is willing to wait for it.

But who would believe it?

Sometimes, a reputation is more powerful than a gun.

Much becomes justified when your public image is one of immutable moderation.

  


  


_(Hamilton had always reminded Burr of love. Sufficiently obstinate; impossible to get rid of; impossible to talk oneself out of noticing. Utterly immoderate. Ultimately inescapable._

_Death, too, seemed just the same._

_There was no separating any of them from one another in Burr’s mind, looking back._

_That had been true, even then.)_

  


  


The affair peters out on its own, after a fashion. Hamilton rises through the ranks of politics, is seen at his office less and less, and Burr is, at _long_ last, on a separate trajectory, proving himself a competent and likeable Senator. 

They still run into each other occasionally, as they are wont to do, running in political circles in New York as they do, and on these occasions their interactions are largely positive. As it turns out, not generating much spitting hatred or competition accordingly results in a complete end to angry fucks in back rooms. At some point, Hamilton acknowledges that “talk less, smile more” isn’t a bad political choice after all; and in a way, Burr finds he is similarly grateful to Hamilton for so willingly demonstrating the traits that make for a terrible politician so that he may himself avoid the same mistakes.

Respect. Burr is grateful.

Years pass. 

Then -- Phillip dies. He is killed terribly and publicly, in a method resulting from such foolish passion that Burr initially thinks he’s misheard the news, that the senior Hamilton had been killed instead. It seems that death does not discriminate, even in Hamilton’s case.

The lease for Hamilton’s office opens up soon after. Burr stands in his doorway when they remove Alexander’s belongings, endeavoring to convey as much neutrality as possible as he watches the procession of men whose names he does not know as they make the trips, and he makes it for nearly a half hour before finding he needs to duck back into his office in order to weep in peace.

It is almost a year that passes, in the end, without Burr seeing him at all after the Hamiltons move uptown. When they next run into each other at last, Burr is handing out pamphlets for the election; he turns to see Hamilton smiling sadly at him, almost unrecognizable with the lines in his face and the grey in his hair, from some shadow at his back.

“Well! If it isn’t Aaron Burr, sir.”

He sounds the same, however.

Burr can’t help but laugh at the sound of him. “Alexander.”

“You’ve created quite a stir, sir!” Hamilton remarks.

“I’m going door-to-door!”

“You’re actively campaigning?”

“Sure!”

Is Hamilton -- _impressed_? “That’s new.”

Burr is too busy being glad to see the man to bother feeling reactive to Hamilton’s emotive facial expressions. “Honestly it’s kind of draining!” he says cheerfully, handing a flyer to a passerby.

Hamilton watches him for a moment, hands held behind his back, before stepping toward him with a renewed and uncharacteristic -- _was it still uncharacteristic?_ \-- seriousness. 

“Burr,” he says.

“Sir?”

“Is there anything you wouldn’t do?”

At this, finally the smile drops from Burr’s face. “No,” he says. He appraises Hamilton as though to assess his hubris, this man who has done twice what he has for less political gain and who thus has no jurisdiction for judgment; but when he sees a man who mourns rather than one who is celebrating a victory, the corners of his mouth tighten.

He changes tack. “I’m chasing what I want,” he says, instead of chastising him for annoying him during his campaign. “And you know what?”

“What?”

“I learned that from you.”

The curve of Hamilton’s lips is different, as though his smirk has been weighted by grief. Burr cocks his head and tries to ignore the waves of regret as he watches Hamilton.

The hand-clap on Burr’s shoulder, at least, is familiar.

“Good luck, Aaron Burr, sir,” says Hamilton.

Burr blinks after him, surprised by the well-wishes. “Thank you, Hamilton,” he says sincerely.

He watches Hamilton go, his shoulders sloped by time, his wilderness replaced by the serenity of deep sadness: a thing that is no less dedicated.

The fondness between them is at once peculiar and right. They were friends, once. Weren’t they?

Time washes all.

  


  


Time washes nothing.

 _How does Hamilton,_ Burr divines -- _an arrogant immigrant orphan bastard, whore’s son, somehow endorse **Thomas Jefferson** , his enemy, a man he’s despised from the beginning, just to keep **me** from winning?_

What is it when you finally find you’re able to put words to your admiration, to your respect, to the way you _feel_ , in some way -- and all he has to say to you in return is that he thinks of you as nothing more than dirt, in his eyes?

How can it be that after all of these years, Hamilton continues to consume his waking hours?

Burr sets himself down and presses a fist to his lips as he considers the ways Hamilton has aggrieved him. He considers making a list, but decides that would go too far. He writes, instead, as though inspired by the very man who has just destroyed a quarter-century of work; emulates Hamilton’s writing style, begins with _Dear Alexander,_ then concludes the letter with Hamilton’s favourite signature, as though to _remind_ him of all they have taken from one another--

-  
_I have the honour to be,_  
_yr obdt svt,_
    
    
      _A. Burr_
    

-

Hamilton’s reply is unmistakable:

_I stand by what I said -- every bit of it. You stand only for yourself; it’s what you do. I can’t apologize because it’s true._

The paper crumples in Burr’s hand before he has even finished reading.

How could Hamilton believe -- after _all_ their time -- that he has no beliefs?

He couldn’t.

He -- _doesn’t._

To elect Jefferson over Burr -- after all ... after _everything_ \-- is an intentional slight against him.

So Burr challenges Hamilton to a duel. It’s what Hamilton would have suggested himself, given enough time.

Isn’t it?

  


  


_Wasn’t it?_

  


  


Burr keeps the letters that Hamilton sent him.

There is, much as there was in the rest of his affairs, an excess of honesty within their passages. It is not until after his death that Burr comes to appreciate the restraint he did, in fact, possess: writing around the point of what he wanted to say and yet somehow at once making it abundantly clear.

He had written: _I will not equivocate on my opinion; I have always worn it on my sleeve._

Hadn’t he?

He had written: _I don’t want a fight._

_I don’t want a fight._

_I don’t want--_

Burr is most inclined to remember the flashes of Alexander that most infuriated him: that first meeting when Hamilton had, flushed and bright-eyed, explained to Burr at great length how he wanted to emulate him; the way Hamilton had leaned into Burr’s office, intellect and ardor on display, to try to recruit him for the Constitution’s cause; the way Hamilton’s lips moved beneath Burr’s, telling him, _just you wait_ \-- a promise that had compelled Burr as much as it chastened him --

Alexander holding his pistol in the air when the bullet sliced into him.

_I don’t want a fight._

If Burr reads and re-reads Alexander’s letters, if he thinks of all of the ways he had shown Burr what he truly thought of him before Burr had … well. _No one else is in the room when it happens._

There is at least -- as inevitable as had been Hamilton -- the certainty of someday seeing him again.

_I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory._

In the end, Burr learned much more from Hamilton than he will ever publicly admit.

In that respect, at least, he is confident that he remains himself.

  


  


_(Once, upon leaning down on Burr’s desk to write, Hamilton had flexed his glutes in overt and unfettered seduction, inviting Burr over to him as delightedly as he ever did; and Burr had surprised him by folding himself over Hamilton’s form, his hands bracing tight across Alexander’s chest in unmistakable affection before turning him around and leaning him into the desk as usual._

_In that moment, Hamilton had known: Burr, in fact, cared._

_Hamilton had smiled and allowed Burr to kiss him, as he always did, while Burr rumbled some nonsense about how infuriating Alexander was against his lips; but Burr, too, always smiled all the while. Hamilton wondered if he knew he was doing it, the same way he wondered if Burr knew how the spark appeared in his eyes when Hamilton showed up or, if accounts were accurate, was even mentioned in conversation; he wondered if Burr realized the way he tended to move in Hamilton’s orbit when he was in the room, as though compelled by him to pay rapt attention to everything he said and did._

_As it turned out -- in spite of his better efforts -- Burr wore enough on his sleeve for Hamilton to be able to figure him out._

_And that -- was enough.)_


End file.
